August 29, 2010

050107 AFECT - 1

When travelling in a group, the cat usually has no idea where it is headed. The truck turned right off the Mae Fa Luang Rd & ended up somewhere in the Rimkok area instead of continuing straight to the bridge over the Kok river into Chiangrai town.

Because Dr. AFECT had to stop by his office:

Across from the office:

Bamboo version of the swing:

Video about the Swing Festival filmed in Ban Apa (in Thai with English subtitles) - shows how the swing is built, plus familiar faces like Big Mama & Nalisala

All Akha men memorise the names of all their male ancestors all the way back to first Akha, Sum Mi O (written as Suml Mil Ol with tone marks):

Akha guys who meet for the first time in their lives can just recite their entire lineages from memory to compare & determine how closely or distantly they are related. The old chart above ends at generation #56-57. At present some lineages already have ~60 generations worth of names going back more than 1500 years in time. Everything was memorised as there was no written form of the Akha language. Most guys just have to remember their own lineage, but in every village, one guy (the pima) & his understudies (piya) serve as the village database, memorising the lineages of everyone(!!) + migration history of the village from the original location where their first ancestors initially settled up to the present village site + literature, songs & stuff to recite during rituals + just about everything else pertaining to the Akha way of life. Just imagine the number of digits of pi they would be able to handle...